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Author: Young, Thomas

Biography:

YOUNG, Thomas (1763-1844: ancestry.co.uk)

His date and place of birth and his parentage are not known. At his marriage in 1792 he gave as his parish Holy Cross, Westgate, Canterbury, but in the 1841 census, while living in Margate, replied that he was born out of county (Kent). He preached, published, and married in Newark, Nottinghamshire, in the early 1790s, but there is no evidence that he was born there. Nothing is known about his education. In a letter written shortly before his death, he writes of “sixty-four years’ instruction” in the school of the Holy Spirit--so he may have undergone a conversion experience at the age of seventeen. As a “Preacher of God’s Word” he dedicated what appears to be his first work, The Presumer’s Scourge and Mourner’s Plea (Newark 1790), to Selina, Countess of Huntingdon, and later delivered and printed a memorial sermon on her, A Tribute of Gratitude (Newark 1791).  He was ordained at the Union Chapel, Canterbury (Lady Huntingdon’s Connexion), in 1792. He later moved to Margate and served as “Minister of the Gospel” at the Zion Chapel for 33 years from 1810 until the end of 1843, when ill health forced him to retire. He had hoped “to retire at 70, and give up myself to my books, and occasional services, and in going rambling about the Connexion,” but was persuaded to continue. His congregation presented him with a pictorial bible and twenty guineas. During his ministry he had opened other chapels and spent time at Cheshunt College, the Countess of Huntingdon’s training college for ministers. He married Ann Wilson (1770-1798) on 17 May 1792 at St. Mary Magdalene, Newark. They had three sons and a daughter, all born in Canterbury. After her death in 1798, he married Jane (maiden name, place and date of marriage unknown). He died at the chapel house, Addington Square, Margate, on 9 Oct. 1844 and was buried at the Zion Chapel burial ground. His wife, Jane, died in 1847. Besides the work listed here, he published several theological works which have long since been forgotten, including The Time of Justification Considered (1794), Monumental Pillars (1818), Christian Unity (1821), Remarkable Instances (1823), and Popish Errors Exposed (1825).(ancestry.co.uk 12 Dec. 2023; findmypast.co.uk 12 Dec. 2023; Kentish Gazette29 Oct. 1844; South Eastern Gazette 16 Mar. 1847; Countess of Huntingdon’s New Magazine June 1851, 131-2) AA

 

Other Names:

  • T. Young
 

Books written (1):

2nd edn. Margate/ [London]: printed for the author by J. Deane/ F. Westley, 1820